Who Benefits When I Shut Up?

This past weekend at Second Story Church, we read a story about the prophet Elijah from 1Kings 19 where Elijah… let’s just say he was a little burnt out. God’s answer for Elijah’s burnout wasn’t found in anything spectacular. It was found in what the Bible calls a “thin whisper” in Elijah’s silence before Him.

And that got me thinking: How do we be silent in God’s presence in a world that’s addicted to noise? Who benefits from silence? Let me give you just one person who benefit when you and I dare to do what our world encourages us not to – and that’s actually be quiet, still, and silent.

Stillness and silence helps us be present with OURSELVES.

One of the first people to benefit when we learn to be still and silent is US! When you break your routine of noise and the addiction most of us have to constant distraction, you actually have a chance to listen to what’s going on inside of you.

The NBA playoffs started this weekend, and I have high hopes for my Boston Celtics this year. But I discovered a new trick this season for watching Celtics games without getting nervous for them while they’re playing. When things aren’t going well and the Celtics are playing on the road in a hostile arena, and the momentum is against them and they can’t buy a bucket – you know what I do? It’s kind of ridiculous, but I promise you it works: I watch the game on mute. I watch it in silence. Why?!

I don’t need to listen to an opposing crowd cheering for everything I don’t want to happen! I don’t need to listen to their stupid celebration when things are going wrong! I don’t need announcers nitpicking everything the Celtics are doing and pointing out everything they’re screwing up! I’ve got eyes! I can see that for myself! So Doris Burke, Stan VanGundy, and anyone else who’s commentating on the game, in the name of Jesus, if you can’t tell me something about how we’re going to dig ourselves out of this hole we’re in, I don’t want to hear it! It’s making me nervous! It’s making me anxious! I don’t need that mess in my ears right now! I just mute the TV and it’s incredible how much anxiety goes away! I can watch even the hard things and see them for what they are and evaluate them without all the noise of a crowd that’s cheering against me and announcers who have nothing good to say. I might even play some spa music underneath the action just to keep myself calm while I watch.

 You want the truth? Some of us, that’s all we’ve got on our anxiety and insecurity right now – crowds cheering for all the wrong stuff and announcers who are nitpicking everything apart all the time. This is why athletes delete social media when the playoffs start – I don’t need all that negativity and pressure on top of the pressure I’m already under and the anxiety I feel – I need my coach, I need my teammates, and I need my family, and that’s it!

 Silence and stillness help me to mute what swirls around in my heart and mind so I can see things more clearly and realize what’s happening inside me. In Psalm 131:1-2, David wrote: Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

 David is saying that calming and quieting yourself is what mature people do so they can be in tune with themselves through silence and stillness – getting to know what’s really going on with them without the added momentum of anxiety that all the noise brings. It’s a mark of maturity to press mute. Noise and distraction are a mark of immaturity. See – that’s the thing – when I say that silence and stillness are ways to be present with yourself so you can be alert to what’s in you – I’m assuming you actually want to know. A lot of us would rather not know. We’re pretty scared of what bubbles up in us when we get still and quiet. That’s when the insecurity comes up that we hide underneath our workaholism and our workout plan. That’s when the insecurity and loneliness comes up that we hide under a social calendar that we’d fill every evening if we could.

You can’t fight the clutter of noise within you by creating more noise around you. Fighting noise that way is a never-ending battle in which eventually you won’t be able to hear, discern, or recognize anything – it’s all just going to be noise – and it’s going to get louder and louder and louder. So you’re actually way better off learning to sit in stillness and silence so you can deal with the noise WITHIN you, partner with God on weeding through that – what’s healthy? What isn’t? – so you can deal with the noise AROUND YOU in a non-anxious way. Stillness and silence helps you better know you.

Proverbs 10:19 says, “Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut.” This is the Bible literally telling some of us that the reason we’re sinning, the reason we’re missing the mark, the reason we’re experiencing pain, the reason we’re repeating the pattern, the reason we can’t unlock the next level is because we will not shut up long enough to listen to Him. If you want a better relationship with yourself, others, or with God – you need to learn to be still and silent so you can listen in a non-anxious way and carry His peace to the world around you.

Why I Need A Rest... And You Do, Too

I have a confession.

As a “Type A,” check-list oriented, achievement-driven, goal-striving, self-motivated guy… I struggle to regularly practice the sabbath in my week.

I’m getting better at it. But the thing about the sabbath is that if you don’t observe it, this is one of the 10-commandments that will actually catch up with you – it will force you to observe it – it’s just called a different name when that happens: Burnout. I’ve met the sabbath in burnout before, and frankly, I’d rather not meet it there again. So, these days I’m trying hard to be better about something that should be so simple – finding regular rest in the schedule of my week.

Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word, “Shabbot,” which means TO STOP. In ancient, Jewish practice, people got very legalistic about the practice of the Sabbath. They actually invented 39 categories of stuff you couldn’t do, your family couldn’t do, your kids couldn’t do, and even your livestock couldn’t do when Sabbath rolled around every week. The idea went from: “Let’s spend a day a week resting and reflecting on God together in our relationships!” to, “Let’s play a giant game of spiritual “Gotcha!” The ritual and routine became legalistic in the extreme.

The problem is that the Sabbath was never meant to be legalistic. Just like everything else in the Bible – it’s relational. God didn’t take a break on the 7th day because He was tired. He took a break because He made human beings and he wanted to spend time with them. That’s why keeping the Sabbath is #4 on the list of the 10 Commandments – as Israel was coming out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt, God sent Moses up to the top of a mountain and gave him the 10 laws – and really what these were meant to be were instructions on how to now live as free people. It had been a while since they had lived that way, so God gave them the 10 Commandments as instructions about how to live AND STAY free.

This is why when Jesus comes along He told people in Mark 2:27: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” What Jesus is saying is that the Sabbath was always meant to be a gift for you, not a burden on you. Without it, you’ll end up living in slavery instead of freedom. And by the way, you don’t need to live in Egypt to be a slave. You can be a slave to expectations. A slave to anxiety. A slave to insecurity. A slave to misunderstanding. Sabbath is a way for free people to stay living like they’re free.

And yes – that freedom comes with limits. The Sabbath is a limit. But it’s a limit that produces life. It’s kind of a funny thing – in the creation story in Genesis, God blesses animals, and he blesses people, and He blessed the 7th day of rest. That’s kind of a weird combination, right? But what scholars point out is that God blesses the things that are capable of producing more life. Rest produces more life.

So how do you practice sabbath in your week? Let me give you 4 ingredients that have helped me in my own practice. Maybe they’ll help you, too.

1.     Pause

Remember – what does the word “Shabbot” mean? Sabbath means to stop. We tend to live as though everything is an emergency, even when it really isn’t. So practicing the sabbath is really a way of resisting the tyranny of the urgent by pushing pause on our urgency. And when you push pause on your urgency, you’re telling whatever insecurity, whatever anxiety, and whatever thing inside you is driving it: You aren’t God. You’re incapable of bringing me more life, or bringing life-producing blessing into my life – only God can do that.

So, your sabbath day SHOULD look different than the rest of your week. Here’s a good test for you – if someone were to watch your Sabbath day on mute, would they be able to tell that day is any different from the rest of your life? It’s ok to work on your car on your sabbath. It’s ok to fix something around your house. It’s ok to clean your bathroom. Sometimes a clean house leads to a rested spirit – it does for me, anyway. The challenge is to make sure that the activity isn’t wound based, and it’s actually based in you enjoying it.

 2.     Play

Make a big breakfast. Watch sports. Dial up a great movie on your favorite streaming service. Indulge in some good food. Do a long workout at an enjoyable pace. Spend time with the people closest to you – this is about bucket filling stuff that you do in relationship with the people closest to you.

In my house when my kids were young, every Sunday night we did something called popcorn, shake, and a movie night – we’d just watch movies together and eat a bunch of unhealthy food. For you, it might be fishing. It might be building something. Go to a game – whatever – the point is that sabbath needs to have an element of play – something in it that’s a bucket filling activity. And it’s not self-indulgent. It SHOULD involve the relationships closest to us.

 3.     Praise

Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite pastors and people, said that the sabbath needs to have some kind of marking on it, some kind of practice, where we intentionally thank the giver for the gifts we experience. Many of us will take a day off. But not all of us will mark the day by making it holy in any way, shape, or form – it’s all pause and play with no praise.

For many of us, Sunday is a natural day to make our sabbath because we go to church as a part of it and naturally have a moment of praise when we are there. Whatever day you pick, you need to figure out what this could look like in your life. Your Sabbath has got to have a pocket of praise.

It could be waking up, making some good coffee, and making a list of things you’re grateful for today. It could be listening to some worship music. It could be starting the day with prayer and journaling. As Christians, we don’t believe that we move toward the thriving side of the mental health spectrum by just resting our bodies and “unplugging” – we believe that part of our well-being is actually a spiritual thing – that truly healthy people acknowledge that there is a God, and we are not Him. One writer I admire a lot says, “Sabbath is a form of resistance against the pull of living a Godless life.”

 In other religions, God is bound to geography. In Islam, God is in Mecca. In Buddhism, God is in the out of body metaphysical space. In Christianity, God is with you. He is Immanuel. God is not off in the distance, He is near. His Spirit is within you. He’s waiting for you in this day of rest, calling to you: “Let’s go make this day holy together!” It’s got to have praise.

4.     Prep

If you’re going to practice the sabbath, I’ll be honest with you – there are things I’ll actually work harder at during the week to make sure I don’t have to do them on Saturday, which is usually when I try to practice sabbath. Emphasis on USUALLY and TRY. I’ll work harder to get things done during the week so I can actually unplug on Saturday a little bit more.

 And this is what I’ve found as I’ve experimented with this in my own life – in the flow of the week, I will actually do more and be more productive in my week IF I take Saturdays to rest. There’s a reason I write my messages at 4am on Sundays. I’ll do the outline of them during the week, but then I write them out on Sundays – and the reason is that I’m sharper, clearer, faster, more focused, more present and more productive if I’m rested.

That doesn’t mean I get this perfect all the time. That’s ok! Sabbath, just like the rest of life, is often way messier than we’d like. Hebrews 4: 9-11 says: So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

 The goal isn’t supposed to be how do you get sabbath perfect – don’t make this a legalistic thing. It’s about doing your best. If we’re going to be a non-anxious presence in the world, we need to ask: How do I take a step? It’s about progress, not perfection. We’re so addicted to speed. For many of us practicing the sabbath is going to be a big adjustment. This is going to mess with your life.

And you want to know the truth? That’s the point – the point is that it’s supposed to mess with your life. It’s supposed to be different so we can live out our freedom, not our slavery, and be a non-anxious, life-giving presence to the people around us and the situations we find ourselves in every week.

The Danger Is Hoping For Less

We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. - Luke 24:21

 Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures.  - Luke 24:25

 You know what that phrase, “We HAD HOPED…” PAST TENSE means? It means, “We used to have hope, but we do not have hope anymore.” What have you hoped for in your life at this point? In your marriage? In your career? In your physical health? In your finances? In your relationships with your kids – where did you USED TO have hope… that you don’t anymore?

The disciples traveling the road to Emmaus with Jesus after his resurrection told him, “We had hoped… That knowing Jesus would actually mean something different. But here we are – just a couple of dudes, walking the road back to Emmaus.” By the way, you know why they’re walking to Emmaus from Jerusalem? Because they’ve given up and they’re going home. The women had told them – HEY!! JESUS IS ALIVE! THE PACKAGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED! And they didn’t believe it. We thought He was different. We had hoped that He was the messiah, and that the idea of a Messiah meant something different. We had hoped…

 So these former disciples are headed home and have no idea that the delivery they were waiting for is now walking on the road with them and is in the process of explaining everything that had to happen for Him to be right there in front of them – and they don’t even recognize it. Their miracle is in the process of unfolding. But they can’t see it. They haven’t tracked it. They expected it to get here sooner in a package that looked different. But now the package is walking along side them and they haven’t even realized it yet. As soon as they do, it’s going to change everything about their lives. The reality of this delivery goes so much farther than they think. But right now, they’re stuck in their expectations of what they’d hoped for – to the point that even Jesus says, “You find it so hard to believe… what God has done and is doing in your life. So hard to believe… How far He’d go to deliver all of Heaven right to your door. You don’t even see it unfolding even now.”

I’ve been a pastor for a long time at this point, and I honestly think there are a couple of reasons that people don’t experience as much resurrection in their lives as they were hoping for and so they give up… One is they just don’t believe the miracle could go that far, and another is that believing it could is too disruptive to their lives. So we become people who had hoped. And giving up on hope can look a lot of different ways – most of the time it doesn’t look like what we think it does. Giving up on your faith for the things YOU HAD HOPED FOR doesn’t always look like sulking, pouting, shrugging your shoulders and kicking a can around the block, muttering to yourself about what God hasn’t done for you.

 Most of the time, giving up looks like apathy – it’s just adjusting your expectations and practices to your experience of reality rather than what you used to hope for in faith. So – giving up doesn’t look like telling people you’re not a Christian anymore. But it can look like not going to church because you’ve given up on the idea that church is worth going to. It doesn’t always look like divorcing the person you’re married to, but it can look like living inside of a very hard relationship and accepting the misery and pain it comes with as normal. Giving up can look like giving up on eating right and exercising because you think that how you feel is just how adults are supposed to feel. It can look like going through the motions in your career even though you don’t really have a sense of purpose in it because you don’t think God has called you to anything else. It can look like never getting time with your teenage kids – because everyone else lets youth activities and sports and social media get to their kids before they do – so you give up on hoping you can develop a deeper relationship with them as they grow and you just kind of accept life with your kids as it’s handed to you…

 Giving up can look like maybe not living in full-blown addiction to something, but dabbling in just enough of it that it you’re using it as an escape. It can look like settling in your dating life for the next available instead of holding out for someone you connect with, who shares your values and your faith – it’s easier to adjust my values and faith than it is to find a miracle in a haystack, isn’t it? It can look like burying your trauma, ignoring your grief, not paying attention to and stuffing your feelings of hurt from things you’ve been through – because you think that the most healing you’re gonna get out of God is enough to be functional in a world that’s just gonna do it to you again, so the best thing you can get from God is a faith for things to be different someday when you die – but until then, we let those hopes go – it’s what we USED TO hope for… we had hoped. Now, we just hope to get by and get through.

 Here's what the road to Emmaus speaks over us on Easter morning – that the real danger about miracles isn’t that God doesn’t still do them. He does. And it isn’t that He won’t deliver on them. He will. The danger isn’t that you’ll hope for too much and then be let down and then quit. THE REAL DANGER WITH THE MIRACLE GOD WANTS TO DO IN YOUR LIFE is that it’s going to take longer to show up than you thought, and it’s going to look different than you thought it would when it gets here, so you can tell the story of what you hoped for, but you won’t recognize it as it’s unfolding in your life.

 The danger of Easter isn’t hoping for too much and being disappointed in your faith. The real danger is hoping for too little, and not understanding that God doesn’t DO little, so you don’t see it as it’s arriving, and you miss the full impact of the delivery because the miracle didn’t fit inside the box you thought it would arrive in. The disciples were hoping for an earthly Kingdom, Jesus said, “I’ve been telling my people since the beginning of time – I came to deliver you eternity.” They were hoping to defeat the Romans. Jesus said, “I defeated DEATH – it’s a much bigger problem, and I’ve taken care of it.”

 The danger of Easter is that your expectations are too little, of a God that’s too small, for a life that fits into the parameters of what you can conceive of and think of – When God says that what I’m trying to do in your life is more than you’d ever know to ask. It’s more than you’d ever dream to imagine – you don’t even know what you don’t know about how far this miracle goes. You don’t know how long I’ve been trying to deliver this to you. I’ve been doing this since the beginning of time – you think I’m gonna fumble the package on the doorstep of your house?

 Your miracle might require your participation. You might have to do the counseling and the therapy. You might have to get the treatment. You might have to work through the problem in the relationship. You might have to pay off the debt. But I’m walking on the road with you! I’m right beside you! I’ve been providing for you the entire time and the whole way – I’m not going to fumble the package now! I’m closer than you think! I’ll explain to you what you don’t know! Your problem isn’t that you used to hope for something that you didn’t get! Your problem is that what I want to give you is so big, and it’s so whole, and it’s so holy, and it’s so healing, and it’s so overwhelmingly beautiful that you don’t even know what it looks like when I’m in the process of walking it out with you!

 The danger of Easter isn’t that the FedEx truck from Heaven can’t find your house. The danger is that you’ll give up and not be there when He arrives!. The miracle of Easter, the resurrection God wants to do in your life – I know it’s taking longer than you’d like. I get it that this isn’t what you through it would look like – I’ve been there in my own life! But once you start seeing what He’s doing as He’s walking… You can’t unsee it. It’s so much bigger, it’s so much more, it goes so much farther than you think.

God's Word Brings Clarity To What's On The Menu

During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” – Matthew 4: 3-4 NLT

 Have you ever gone grocery shopping when you were hungry? Have you ever noticed that your grocery bill goes up by about 40% when that happens? Why is that? It happens because when you’re hungry, everything looks good, doesn’t it?

 Even food you don’t like get’s thrown into your card when you’re hungry. I don’t like tomatoes – but if I’m shopping when I’m hungry, I’ll throw some in the cart, because you never know. Maybe I’ll put them on an omelette… maybe… Then I take that food home and it goes bad before I even eat it and I’ll ask myself, “Why did I even buy these tomatoes? I don’t even like tomatoes!” I was hungry. That’s the reason. And when you’re hungry – everything looks good. Even stuff that isn’t food looks like food when you’re hungry enough.

 Jesus hadn’t eaten anything for 40 days – He had been fasting. And the devil told Jesus, “Turn these stones into bread!” This isn’t a test of Jesus’ hunger. It’s a test of his VISION.

 Jesus said, “First of all, I can see with my own eyes that these are rocks, they’re not food. In order for me to make them into food, I’m going to have to supernaturally turn them into something they’re not so I can fill a temporary desire with a temporary pleasure. But God’s Word says that man does not live by bread alone – meaning that even if they WERE food, which they’re not, that bread is only going to fill me up temporarily – but the Word of God is going to fill me up spiritually – and nourish me eternally. God’s Word is going to satisfy me at a much deeper level. So forgive me, Satan, for passing on turning these rocks into breadsticks – rocks aren’t food! That’s why God didn’t put them on the menu!” Isn’t this what the devil does in your life, too? Make rocks look like they’re the featured item on the menu?

 The first time I ever had to take my dog, Rosie, to the vet, she had eaten a flower that can be poisonous to dogs and she got really lethargic and sick after she ate it. So we took her into the vet. I don’t know why dogs, Beagles in particular, think everything is food, but they do. Rosie was in the back while the Vet was examining her, and a man came into the writing room with his big, beautiful Golden Retriever. I pet the dog for just a second, and I asked the owner, “What was this good boy in here for?”

 The man said, “Well, I was grilling steaks on the patio at my house, and the patio has an area where I keep the grill that’s got some stone and gravel around it. And as I was putting the steaks on the plate for dinner, I knocked the grill by accident and the tray under the grill that catches all the juices from the meat – it spilled onto the rocks. So while my family and I were eating dinner, this guy smelled what had been spilled onto the rocks and ate the rocks… She ate ALL OF THE ROCKS. So I just had to spend $3,500 to have rocks removed from his stomach because he doesn’t know the difference between a real steak and a rock that smells like a steak!”

 Do you know the difference? Jesus does! Jesus said, “That’s not a steak. That’s a rock. I don’t care how much the devil tries to make it look like a steak and smell like a steak – that’s a rock. And eating rocks will kill me.” Jesus knows the difference because God’s word gives Him clarity about what’s on the menu.

So when you’re straining, and you’re wanting, and you’re lacking, and you can’t see real clearly, God’s word can tell you – “HEY! This is food, this isn’t. This is what God is serving, and this is what will kill you.” Jesus said, “Don’t get me wrong – this is a temptation. It’s TEMPTING! But when I put on the corrective lenses of God’s word, I have clarity about what’s on the menu so I know what to order and what to eat. Without it, I’m going to ingest a bunch of things that are just going to land me in an emotional emergency room because the devil poured steak sauce on it, but it’s just a rock – and God didn’t put rocks on the menu for me!”

That man you thought you could fix if you got into a relationship with him? He’s not on the menu – he’s a plate full of rocks. That website you visited for some temporary snack food last night? That’s not a snack. It’s a pile of rocks. That glass in front of you when you’re tempted to say, “I can handle one more?” That’s a glass full of rocks. We keep thinking that rocks look like food.

One of the reasons it’s so important to read your Bible and know God’s Word is that God’s Word brings so much clarity to the food that He serves to meet the desires He gave you. If you’re not clear about what’s on the menu, then we tend to be people who will order anything… eating piles and piles of rocks, hoping and praying that maybe this time, they’ll turn into bread.

Grace Is Your New Uniform

And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.” - Galatians 3:27

You thought it was funny when I talked about Trekkies wearing uniforms in my last post? Let’s talk about the clothes God wants YOU to wear for just a minute…

It’s a uniform called grace…And grace is about one of the most misunderstood and misapplied uniforms anybody ever tried to put on.

Most people think their grace uniform is made out of endless amounts of elastic. There’s a real trend today for clothes that used to be stiff and ridged are now being made out of things that have more elasticity to them. Jeans used to be this really ridged, denim material where you’d put them through the wash and then put them on afterward and they would be so stiff that you could barely sit down without them restricting you in some really uncomfortable ways – anybody remember jeans like that?

 These days, the most expensive jeans – the most expensive dress shirts, the most expensive pants – all of them are made out of material that stretches and wicks your sweat away from your body. It moves with you, and curves with you, and glides with you, and it covers all of the things you want covered. Personally, I’m a big fan of stretchy clothes. I put them on and I’m comfortable just as I am – I can move how I want and it moves with me. I can wear it anywhere and be comfortable and look good doing it. I will gladly wear that kind of uniform.

 Most people think this is how grace is. They think that grace is something that meets me where I am and it bends around me. So when I am applying God’s grace to my brokenness, I think that the fact that God’s grace is sufficient for me means that that it covers all of me and it moves with me, however I am, wherever I want it to go, whatever I’m doing – I can do whatever I want when I’m in the uniform of grace because it’s primary purpose… is my comfort. That’s how most people think of grace, the new clothes Paul is talking about here. It stretches over whatever I want so I can be comfortable just as I am.

 I have other clothes in my closet other than stretchy clothes. I have a few shirts that were tailor made for my body – and I bought them a number of years ago. It’s the coolest thing – you use an app on your phone. It takes pictures of your body, and then through the magic of A.I., it actually designs shirts and pants to fit you. It’s the most incredible thing. I used to put on these shirts, and I’d actually make an audible noise like, “Oooo… that’s how a shirt is supposed to fit.”

These shirts still bend with me. They still curve with me. But the do it in all the right ways and all the right places because they’re form-fit, you know what I’m sayin? They just feel good to wear. Everytime I’ve worn those shirts – to work, church, school – every time – I get complements about them. “Hey, man, that’s a nice shirt. You’re looking good today! Where can I get a shirt like that??” I had a 7th grader notice what I was wearing the other day. He told me – “Mr. Hinrichs… the FIT is DRIPPIN’!” I said, “The what is whatting?” He said, “…the outFIT is DRIPPIN’!” He was telling me I was looking good! I said, “Yeah it is! I drip a LOT! All I DO is drip!” It feels good to wear clothes that fit right!

 And my best clothes? They fit because they’re tailor made – they fit me right, you know? Or… they did until I gained 60 pounds. Because then, I’d go to put on the shirts that were tailor made for me, and suddenly the material that used to cover all of me wasn’t covering all of me anymore. I was stretching the shirts out in ways they weren’t meant to be stretched. I was pulling on them to make them comfortable, but no matter what I did, the shirts just didn’t want to go where I wanted them to go – they wouldn’t comfortably cover what I wanted them to cover.

In that scenario, what changed? Me, or the shirt? It’s me, right? The shirt hasn’t changed. The problem is that the shirt was made in the image of a healthier me that I used to conform to. When I got unhealthy, it’s almost like there was too much of me… and not enough… of the shirt. So in order to fit it – I had a choice – I could do one of two things: I could get healthier and better fit into the image the shirt was made in. Or… I could wear a bigger hoodie.

 When it comes to wearing the uniform of grace, Paul put the choice this way elsewhere in the Bible – He said, “Shall we sin, that grace may abound?” Should we buy stretchier clothes to accommodate our unhealth? Or should we work a little more to conform to the image tailor made for us of what we look like at our best?

 Because that’s who Jesus is – He is the image of God you were created in. And in His love, God said, “All people are my people! There is no distinction between who’s in the club or who’s out of the club! But that doesn’t mean that my clothes are one-size fits all! It means that I will cover you in grace while you work out your salvation. I will cover you with inclusion and acceptance and love in the community of the church while we work together on becoming the healthiest version of yourself. It means that I will walk with you, and teach you, and bless you, and provide for you, and cover you, while we work together on conforming your life to the image of my son that was tailor made for you –

The fact that I love my people doesn’t mean they have a license to do whatever they want! It means they have the right to step into a relationship with me – to step into their identity as sons and daughters. It means they have the power to fight the darkness inside them. It means they have the means to get from where they are to where they need to be – because in this club, my grace meets everyone where they are, but it’s not going to leave them where they are. I love you too much to tell you you’re fine when you’re not. I love you too much to tell you you’re healthy when you’re not. I love you too much to tell you that how you are doesn’t matter when it does.

Jesus said, “I didn’t come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it.” I came to show you what the form is and what the image looks like. So, in grace and in love, and with a lot of patience with each other, we’re gonna put some movement on this thing. If I didn’t love them, I wouldn’t have made the shirt in the image they need to conform to in the first place. Why bother showing them the image if the form doesn’t matter?!

 That means two things – first, nobody has the right to judge anyone, and the church needs to get off it’s high horse and quit judging, condemning, and excluding everyone when it’s own grace-uniform is bulging at the seams! And second, it means you need to quit judging, condemning, and excluding yourself because you think the uniform of grace isn’t going to fit you!

 If I see enough people acting like a bunch of judgmental, exclusionary snobs while wearing a Star Trek uniform, guess what I’m going to assume about Trekkies? They’re judgmental, exclusionary snobs! It’s no different in church! If the people in the church judge, condemn, and exclude me, I’m going to assume that the uniform of grace was never meant for me in the first place – because I’ll never fit into that. I’ll never be healthy enough to wear the grace uniform. I’ll never be good enough. What I did was too much. Where I’ve been is too far gone. I can’t fit into it. And based on what I’ve seen from the church, I don’t really wanna try!

 Paul says: ANYBODY can wear the uniform of grace… God made one for everybody… That’s the beauty of the church. That’s the beauty of God loving His people!

But here’s the other part of it – you have to give up the right to not just judging other people – you have to give up the right to judging YOURSELF! You no longer have the right to say I don’t belong – when Jesus said you do. You no longer have the right to say I’m not good enough, when Jesus died for you. To Him, you were worth that sacrifice.

Paul says, here’s how grace uniforms work: You have to want to wear it. You have to want to get well. You have to want to get healthy. You have to admit that the way you think about yourself is jacked up. You have to acknowledge that the way you’re living isn’t working. You have to notice that the way you’re doing relationships isn’t healthy. You have to want to conform to the image of His Son and not try and make His Son conform to the image of your unhealth.

 So God says, “HEY CHURCH!” You don’t get the right to say who the uniform is for and who it isn’t. I’ve got grace for EVERYBODY! And PEOPLE! INDIVIDUALS! You don’t get the right to tell me what it should look like as it pertains to you when I’m the one who designed it – I’m the captain of this starship! I’m the leader of this club – and because of that – I not only get to say who’s in and who’s out – I get to show you a form and an image of what you could look like at your healthiest, and I want you to fit into that uniform a little more each day.

So the question isn’t will you join the club or not, Leutenant Commander. It’s not does God love you and are you one of His people? You are! The question is: Will you allow yourself to be loved… and will you lean into the grace, and the healing, and the wholeness, and the identity that comes with? Will you put on the grace uniform that an heir of Abraham ought to wear? What would that look like on you as you love people? As you invite them to church? As you relate to people that are hard to relate to? AND… what would it look like in your own thinking about yourself?

Where is the uniform stretching and pulling on you? Where is it a little tight? What needs to get healthier? What is God speaking to you about that?

God loves His people. It’s not about who’s in and who’s out of the club – this is about how you’re going to live long and prosper.

Exclusion Is An Old Hurt

23 Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. 24 Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith.  - Galatians 3: 23-24

 A friend of mine once gave me a documentary to watch about fans of the TV show, Star Trek. It was called Trekkies. The last 10 minutes of the film is filled with people talking all about how Star Trek has been the one place in their lives that they have felt included, accepted, embraced, and even loved for who they were. To a person, they talk about how as goofy as they can be, or as rejected by their family, or for all of their quirks and faults or mistakes, they have always found acceptance and inclusion as a Trekkie. That’s why they do what they do and why they are as fanatical as they are. It’s why they dress in full uniform and try to live by the ideals of Star Fleet. It’s why they go to conventions. It’s why they call each other by rank at their club meetings as they’re making their fan-films. One cast member of Star Trek: The Next Generation actually said in the documentary, “The reality is that Star Trek fans devote more energy and finance and loyalty to the object of their affection than just about any other group of people I’ve ever seen.” If you’re in the church, or you’re a Christian… I mean… does that sound a little bit familiar? Why is that?

 Maybe it’s because it reminds us how how far we’ve gone for the same things. How far would you go to be included in community with other people at a deep level and find a sense of friendship and purpose just as you are? How far have you gone?

 It’s been my experience that’s something people will go to extremes for.

People will stay in bad relationships for that. They will continue unhealthy habits and behave in ways that might seem strange to have that experience. They will engage in activities that are inappropriate or ill-advised – even unhealthy. They will even dress up in uniform and go to conventions. They will have surgeries to alter themselves, make lifestyle decisions they know are unhealthy and unbalanced; all for the sake of finding someone, somewhere that will accept them and include them in community just as they are.

 In the early church, this was a point of huge debate from the very beginning – who’s in the club, and who’s out of it? Who are God’s people, and who aren’t? How do we know? Is THE CHURCH a Jewish-only club? Is it open to Gentiles – people not of Jewish decent? Can women be in the club? Can slaves be in the club? How far does this Jesus group really go? What’s the uniform we should be wearing? How should people be dressing? If you dress like THIS or THAT are you in or out? This is one of the very first controversies in the early church –

 And then along comes Paul in the book of Galatians, and he says – IN CHRIST there is neither Jew, nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female. Jesus said, “For God SO LOVED THE WORLD that He gave His only son…” In other words, we’re talking today about the fact that God loves His people, and yet one of the first questions Christians tend to get hung up on is: WHO ARE GOD’S PEOPLE? To which Jesus and Paul both say, “There are no people who are not God’s people. Everybody is God’s people…” And that’s something a lot of people have a really hard time with.

Can I tell you a secret you might not know about yourself if you’re a Christian?

 You can laugh all you want about Star Trek fans, a.k.a. “Trekkies,” calling themselves by their rank as they go to a convention or attend a club meeting that’s based on made up space-stories, but here’s the hard truth: The world doesn’t look at the church any different than you look at Trekkies.

“Oh you’re ‘deacon’ on the ‘board of stewards’ at your church?? Ok…”

“…Oh, you’re a part of the ‘tech team’ or the ‘connections team’ at your ‘somebody rose from the dead club’? Rock on, brother…”

“You put art on the walls of your house based on this? You decorate with this stuff? You give it your time, affection, and your money? You go to conventions… Oh, I’m sorry – I mean Christian conferences?”

The world does not see a real distinction between us and Trekkies. They think the story of Jesus is just as silly, just as made up, and just as insane.

And part of the reason they don’t see the difference is that the church hasn’t always done the greatest job of helping them to see the difference. Because they come to church and they feel just as excluded, just as alienated, just as picked on, just as rejected in the church… as they do in the world.

 In Galatians, Paul says, for a long time, we lived under the law – and that’s what the law did. It placed access to God under guard. It put God’s people into a kind of protective custody – the law said, “These ones are my people, and these ones are not…” And Paul says that we needed that until the way of faith came – until Jesus. It was important that we have that until Jesus came – and when Jesus comes on the scene, He makes a new way for us to have a relationship with God, which is through faith in Him, not the law – not the stuff that was rule-based. Inclusion now isn’t based on rules, looks, cosmetics, or even the law – it’s based on a relationship with Jesus, who fulfilled the law when we couldn’t. So, Paul says that the fact that you’re still trying to define who’s in the club and who isn’t is really kind of a YOU problem. You think we’re still under law and not under grace, and as a result, you’re excluding people, you’re overlooking people, you’re dismissing people you shouldn’t.

 Now… I don’t know if you’re feeling it while you’re reading this… But even in using the words inclusion and exclusion – I know some of us might be getting a little tightly wound right now. The reason is that these are trigger-words in the culture we live in right now. When I’m not at church on Sundays, I teach in the public school system where the idea of inclusion, tolerance, celebration of differences – these are real buzz words that can have very strange applications. What you’re feeling is the is the tension we live in – Who is the gospel for? Who is Jesus for? Who’s allowed to be one of God’s people that John says He loved so much that He gave His only son for? We live in a day and a time when people are D E S P E R A T E to belong to something. Desperate to feel included. Desperate to feel seen. Some people make up clubs based on space stories. Other people make up clubs about people who think they’re cats. Other people think they follow someone who rose from the dead 2,000 years ago – what’s the difference. …I need to belong somewhere… to something… to somebody… I need community – I need connection…

 The number one most common question I get about my church from people, often times before they will even attend a service at our church, is some version of, “Will your church accept someone like ME?” And then they’ll go on to describe the circumstance that’s left them feeling excluded from the church. It could be something they’ve done, a preference, a belief, could be something else entirely.

 But what Paul reminds us of in this passage is that this whole idea of feeling excluded, on the outside, feeling out of the club – this is a very old hurt. It’s a very old feeling that a lot of people have. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s the number one question people want to know: “Your church – is that a place I will feel loved? Will I feel accepted? Will I be embraced for who I am just as I am? Is this going to be a community that I can find relationships in? And be loved in?” This isn’t new to 2024 America – we didn’t invent exclusion. People have felt this for a long time. And it’s why they love things like Star Trek. Because feeling excluded is a real old hurt for people. Even the Bible says, “It is not good for man to be alone…” Everybody needs a place to connect, and most of the time we have a really hard time finding it.

 So Paul reminds the church that yeah – there was a time when we defined ourselves by who was in and who was out, and we had a way of doing that called the law. As a church, as a people, as a club, as a group, we’ve had some pretty severe ways of reminding each other of that through the centuries. But now we have something better. We have grace. We have the way of faith through Jesus. And because of that, we know that all people are God’s people – and THEY ARE!!! BUT – before everyone starts jumping up and down saying, “THAT’S AWESOME! The church is all about grace! I can be a part of the church and do whatever I want!” We need to understand a few things about grace. More on that in my next post…

Why Your Greatest Pain Will Come From Relationships

“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:12

Jesus says that the commandment is to love like He loved. That’s not the same thing as, how well others are loving us in return. I’m not saying that’s unimportant. I’m simply saying how well you love others and how well you’re loved in return are not the same question – one is completely within your control and is a decision you have to make, the other is less so.

And I point that out not to discourage anybody – but to simply say that to most people when you talk to them about loving people and being in loving relationships, we think about romantic love, don’t we? We think about the flowers and chocolates we want someone to deliver to us because we deserve it. At least that’s what Facebook and Instagram want us to believe, isn’t it? How many posts have all of us seen where in the wake of a break-up someone was declaring to the universe, “I DESERVE TO BE LOVED THE WAY I WANT TO BE LOVED. I WAS THE GREATEST THING TO HAPPEN TO THEM! I DESERVE SOMEONE WHO PUTS ME FIRST! WHY? BECAUSE I DESERVE IT!” People talk a lot about love, and when they do they tend to talk about what they deserve and what they think love is supposed to feel like. Anybody who’s going to be with me, they just better know that I’m the greatest thing that has ever happened to them…

Well… You might be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to them… But that’s not the measuring stick of love in Jesus’ view. Jesus says that the greatest love, the real test, isn’t about the love you receive. It’s about the love you give. It’s about whether you can love people like He doe. And the way he loves people is sacrificial. It’s bottomless. It’s unconditional. The person who loves well, lays down their own life for the sake of those around them.

In describing love in 1 Cor. 13, Paul says you want to love well? Here’s what it looks like: Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. That’s the definition of a successful life, says Paul. Do that. That’s laying your life down for those you love. Jesus says, you learn to do that,and in God’s eyes, that’s success.

Now, in Jesus’ case, laying down his life for his friends was a literal action. Nobody is calling you to go out of here today and die a literal death – either emotionally or physically. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone, especially in an abusive situation, is to lay down a boundary and protect it. But jJesus knows something here about how love works that we don’t like to talk about on Facebook or Instagram, or ANYWHERE ELSE – that loving people well is going to be the cause of the greatest pain in your life.

It'll be your greatest sacrifice. It’ll be your biggest hurt. It’ll be the hardest thing you ever do. You’re going to have to choose to do it, because it’s not going to naturally choose itself. In fact, your nature is going to fight against it – not because you don’t want to love the people in your life – but because loving them well means that you’re going to have to do things you don’t want to do. You’re going to have to face things you don’t want to face. You’re going to have to name things you don’t want to name. You’re going to have to work through conflicts you don’t want to work through. You’re going to have to dig up stuff from your past and work through it that you would rather just blow past. You’re going to have to disrupt your habits of mind and your thought patterns and redefine everything in the world you think of as NORMAL. Because for you to love people well, it means that not only do you need to let them into your heart and make yourself vulnerable to them – which can be a huge source of pain all unto itself when that doesn’t go well – it means that you need to remove the stuff within you that prevents you from loving them the way you should.

When I went through the hardest years of my life – roughly 2013-2018ish – I was massively depressed. I got on medication that caused me to become overweight and unhealthy. I was getting handed to daily by my anxiety and insecurity. I was a shell of myself – and I knew it. It affected my thinking, it dominated my feelings, it wrecked my identity – It was awful. And here’s the thing – you can’t experience these things and have them NOT affect your relationships.

I reached a point where I had to decide a few things – and I had to decide them not for me. I had to decide them for my kids. We went through some stuff as a family, and I knew that if I’m going to be even kind of the dad my kids need me to be, if I’m serious about loving them well through it, then that means a few things need to happen –

I’ve got to go to counseling 2x per week for a period, not because I want to, but because I need to get to the bottom of this stuff so I can be better for them. They need me as stable and consistent as possible, so loving them well means manning-up and get to the bottom of my issues and finding some healing. Nobody said it’s going to be easy. But that’s the job.

That means unearthing some things that aren’t pleasant to face. That means falling on some swords I didn’t want to fall on. It means I needed to put in the time and the work and the discipline to lose the weight I had gained. It means I need to make a decision to choose a new thought pattern when I old one’s were pulling me away from them. Again – if I love them, if they matter to me, if they are important to me, if these are the people that God has entrusted to me, if this is who He’s given to me to love, then my attitude towards them needs to be: love them like Jesus – I need to die to self, pick up my cross, and follow Jesus.

Do you know how hard that is to do? That’s like difficulty level 10,000! It’s unrelenting! But my kids need a dad! And my grandkids are going to need a grandpa! And my family needs a brother and a son. The best gift I can give them is the healthiest version of me. And I can’t give them that if I won’t face the pain of getting myself there. This is why the Bible says it isn’t good for man to be alone – because when you work through this stuff in relationships, THAT is when you’re going to become the person you’re supposed to be. This is your discipleship. This is following Jesus. You want to get to the victory of the empty tomb? AWESOME! Pick up a cross and follow!

And this is to say nothing of the fact that once you’re there, the hardest conversations you’ll ever have are about relationships. The toughest conflicts you’ll ever work through are in your most intimate relationships. That argument with your boss at work? It’s child’s play compared to the conflict in your marriage.

Nobody says this stuff on Facebook – you know why? Because we think love is supposed to feel good ALL THE TIME – and it can feel good. But to get to the good you have to work through the pain! You don’t get Easter Sunday without Good Friday. Greater love has no one than he that lays down their life.

Your greatest pain will come from loving people well. Ask Jesus about the scars in His hand the next time you pray. He’ll tell you about the pain. But he’ll also tell you why it was worth it. He’ll tell you about the joy that was set before him. That’s what the bible says drove Jesus to the cross – because it’s true: Relationships will be your greatest and most intimate souce of pain. But the pain we experience in them now is a part of the joy and the victory we come to know in them later on.

Don't Stay Tied To What You Thought It Would Be

John begins his gospel in such an interesting way. “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed... God created…, and nothing was created…The Word gave life... It’s all past tense and talking about what’s already happened – what already was. It’s almost like John is saying, “If I’m going to tell you the story of Jesus – if you’re going to understand how hope works – I have to start at the beginning. And by “the beginning,” I don’t mean Mary and Joseph and Bethlehem and all the stuff you heard in Sunday School. I have to go ALL THE WAY BACK to the beginning of creation. The beginning of TIME. That’s where the story really begins.

John wants us to understand that hope is not a new thing that we came up with all on our own. Hope is something God had in mind for you to live in from all the way back at the beginning of time. And as he’s writing about it, John knows that it was ALL the way back there… that hope was lost. That’s where the need for hope developed. Hope is a lot older than you think. John isn’t talking about hope like you HOPE to get a new bike at Christmas. Or you HOPE you get a big bonus check from work at the end of the year.

 God created human beings with certain longings for connection at our core – connection to Him and to one another. As John begins his gospel, he’s saying that those longings come out of us as individual hopes… I have a longing for connection and relationship… so… I hope I can find someone who won’t reject me. I have a longing for joy… I hope I can find it in a way that’s life-giving and not life-sucking… I have a longing for purpose… I hope I can find my calling… Do you see how this works?

 Here's the reason John connects hope with the beginning of time and not the beginning of your job, or the beginning of your relationship, or the beginning of anything else in your individual life: It’s because he’s trying to tell you that real hope is older than you are. It comes from something eternal, ancient, and deep. Real hope comes from the ancient past. Everything about this passage is in the past tense… until verse 5 – where John says –  The light shines (PRESENT TENSE) and the darkness can never (FUTURE) extinguish it.

 That’s good news because most of the things I hope for in my life are based on what I’ve known and what I’ve seen and what i’ve experienced. My capacity for hope is very much limited by the context of my life. I’ll prove it to you:

If I’m in a relationship, and it’s not going well – could be a marriage, could be a friendship, whatever – but if I’m going to hope the relationship is going to get better, then I probably have a specific idea of what that better looks like based on the context of that relationship. I HOPE we can overcome this conflict. I HOPE we can get through this season. I HOPE we can work through these issues. What you’re hoping for is tied to what you’re struggling with! I HOPE I can overcome this addiction. I HOPE I can make it another day. I HOPE the money lasts. I HOPE I don’t screw up parenting my kids and they turn out to be ax-murderers – hope is always contextual. What I’m hoping for in my situation is dependent on what I’m struggling with.

John says that if you want to really live in hope – stop tying your hope to YOUR past, YOUR EXPERIENCE, YOUR KNOWLEDGE, AND YOUR IDEA ABOUT WHAT’S POSSIBLE IN YOUR LIFE AND START TYING IT TO SOMETHING DEEPER! HOPE COMES FROM THE PAST, BUT IT DOESN’T STAY THERE! Hope isn’t limited to what you’ve known – it’s based on what God has already done!

 Some of us, we don’t even know what to hope for in our life because our hope is tied too hard to our context. You grew up in a dysfunctional home, so you’re worried you’re going to create one in your family. You struggle with an addiction, so your greatest hope is just survival to get to the next hit or high. You struggle with insecurity, so your HOPE someone will validate you and there’s no limit to the length you’ll go to in order to get it – because your hope is tied to what you’ve known in the moment. Your hope is tied to your context. John would say – you want to talk about HOPE? YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO HOPE FOR YET!

 God’s idea of the kind of hope you can live in is bigger than what you’ve known so far! John says, “I’m not even going to go through the whole genealogy of Jesus! I’m not even going to try to recount most of the prophecies about Jesus. I’m not even going to start this story with Bethelehem. WHY?! BECAUSE HOPE CAN’T BE TIED TO THE HUMAN PAST. THE HUMAN PAST IS STORY AFTER STORY OF ONE JACK-WAGON AFTER ANOTHER WHO LOST HOPE AS THEY WERE SEARCHING FOR IT! THEY DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR! If you want to know where HOPE comes from? It’s not from you’ve experience! And it’s not from anything YOU know. And it’s not from anything YOU THINK IS NORMAL!

 John says hope goes ALL the way back – we’re going to tie our hope to what we’ve known because what we’ve known hasn’t worked. And if you tie your hope to the past, if you’re going to limit your hope to what you know today about your life… then you’re going to live a much smaller life than you were created to liv. We’ve got to connect hope to God’s imagination about our lives, not our own. We’ve got to get our hope out of our heads, and our broken hearts, and our shattered dreams, and our hurting spirits – because if that’s going to be the origin of our hopes, it’s going to hold us back from what we can become. If I anchor my hope, LIMIT my hope to just what I’ve know, then my hope stays small, and it ties me to a specific context and a past – something like:

 I THOUGHT MY MARRIAGE WAS GOING TO TURN OUT THIS WAY… I THOUGHT WE WOULDN’T STILL BE STRUGGLING WITH THIS BY NOW… I THOUGHT THEY WOULD NEVER LEAVE ME… I THOUGHT THAT’S WHAT BEING A GOOD PARENT LOOKED LIKE… I THOUGHT THAT I’D NEVER LOSE THEM… I THOUGHT I’D NEVER STRUGGLE WITH THAT – HOW MUCH LONGER ARE YOU GOING TO STAY TIED TO WHAT YOU THOUGHT WOULD HAPPEN IN THE PAST? HOW MUCH LONGER HOW MUCH LONGER ARE YOU GONNA BASE YOUR HOPE ON WHAT HAS BEEN INSTEAD OF ASKING GOD WHAT COULD BE!?

 Wouldn’t it be better to tie your hope to God? Because if God is really with me in my hope, then I can ask –

God, what would this relationship look like if YOU were putting it back together?

God, what would my purpose look like… if I believed YOU were calling me?

God, what strength would I have to raise my kids, or beat my addiction, or overcome this situation… if I tie my hope not to what I know… But to what YOU do?

I can’t anchor my hope to my past. It’s going to weigh me down and hold me back. I need something that’s going to pull me forward.

The Comfort Is In The Fade

 I want you to listen to the way Isaiah 40 begins… and then I want you to hear the way the passage ends – when he’s announcing and prophecying the bith of Jesus, this is how Isaiah begins and ends the passage – “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. …7 The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord. And so it is with people. 8 The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”

 The passage starts by saying, “HEY, EVERYBODY LONGING FOR STUFF! I’VE GOT COMFORT FOR YOU!!” and then it ends with, “WE’RE ALL GONNA WITHER, SHRIVEL, FADE, AND DIE!!!” How exactly is that comforting?!?! Even in the middle of the passage – v. 6 says 6 A voice said, “Shout!” I asked, “What should I shout?” What do you want me yelling about?? This doesn’t seem comforting ATL ALL!! In fact, it’s kind of the opposite! This seems terrible! How is the fact that we wither and fade COMFORTING!!!!!?????

 It's comforting because God knows. How is it comforting to have longings in me that are unfulfilled? It’s comforting because God sees them and speaks to them. How is it comforting that whether it’s today, or tomorrow, or next week, or 50 years from now that my life is going to end and that you can be going along fine in your week and then something can come completely out of the blue and cut you down like a lawnmower cuts the grass?

 God says, the comfort isn’t in the cutting. The comfort is in the connection. He says, you’re right – people do wither. People do fade. But I don’t. And now I’ve made a way for you to stay connected not to the withery, fady stuff – I’ve made a way for you to be connected to me. The Word of the Lord stands forever –  Jesus is the Word made flesh – His Spirit is the breath of life – they stand forever. So, listen to me – as you fade out guess what else fades out? Longing fades out into fulfillment. Desire fades out into purpose. Hurt fades out into healing. Anxiety fades out into hope. Depression fades out into victory. Disconnection fades out into intimacy.

How are longings fulfilled at Christmas? They’re fulfilled in you learning to trust the fade. You need to let go of yourself and all the ways you try to fulfill longings outside of Him, and trust Him with everything you are, everywhere you go, and in everything you do.

You know, when I was laying there in that bed – you know what I wasn’t thinking? I wasn’t thinking, “Man alive… I’m sure glad I acquired enough stuff in my life… I sure wish I would have visited Australia… I always wanted to visit Australia… I sure wish I made more money… I just wish I could have driven a newer car… I’m sure glad I successfully avoided my problems all the way to the end… Man, I sure had everyone fooled. I had so much stuff, and I had so many experiences – that’s how you know I had a full life – by what I had and what I did.” Nobody thinks that when they’re laying in that bed. Nobody does.

You know what I was thinking? I was thinking, “My kids – my family – my friends – Did I love them well enough… Did I get enough of my blockages out of the way that even if this is where I fade out – would they know… I trusted God enough to allow myself to be loved so he could get it through me to them?

 That’s Isaiah 40 – that those in the hospital bed can take comfort – you’re never in the room alone. I’m never in a relationship alone. I’m never in church alone. I’m never at a family gathering alone. I never face an addiction alone. I never face a problem alone. I never have a longing alone. My comfort is in my ability to fade. Because the more I fade out, the more He fades in. And I know I am someday going to lay on a bed like the one I was in on Thursday, and all that’s going to matter – all that’s going to matter – is was did I find real the only real comfort??

Jesus says that the one who loses his life will find it – that’s what Jesus came to do and to show us how to do – I’m only fine because God was urgent about my separation from Him when I wasn’t.

You know what my comfort is? My comfort is that in learning to trust God enough to allow myself to fade out and Him to fade in, I will become more of myself than I ever could on my own. I’ll know more love in Him than outside of Him. I’ll know more rest in Him than I will without Him. I will know more peace and happiness and joy and intimacy and purpose… laying on that bed… if I trust that my comfort… is in the fade.

Can I ask you? What’s swelling up in your spirit today that it’s time you had looked at? Why aren’t you urgent about it? Why are you doing what I did – telling everyone you feel fine and you don’t need to be seen… when that blockage, that longing, is killing you?

Embrace the fade. Lean into it. Those longings you have running around in you – those aren’t bad things. They’re just reminders that hey – you’re not going to fulfill those on your own. So you can stop pretending… You can stop being scared of facing them… You can stop avoiding them, telling everyone you’re fine when you’re not – God knows you’re not…

That’s why there’s comfort at Christmas – because even though it feels like you’re in that dark room knowing your blockage but not knowing how to treat it – reminded that your life is fragile… there’s a light that has overcome the darkness that isn’t fragile at all – it’s already at work in you – and it’s so strong. And so bright. It fades out the darkness and brings perspective, it brings peace… It brings love and it brings joy. You’re lucky you came in today…

The Life You're Longing For Is On The Other Side Of The Work You Haven’t Done

Isaiah 40:3-5 says “Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.”

 What’s the good news? The good news of the announcement of the birth of Jesus is that your sad days are over and sin has been dealt with. That’s what God has done.

But then Isaiah says that we’ve got this other stuff that’s a problem – we’ve got obstacles in life and stuff that needs to be cleared out! There are things that are crooked that need to be straightened. There are valleys that need to be filled – mountains in the way that need to be leveled. We’ve got rough spots that need to be smoothed out. Who’s job is it to do all of that?! Who gets that job? That’s us!!

 This whole passage in Isaiah 40 is all about the announcement of Jesus coming to earth. It’s all about Jesus’s birth. Sending Jesus and forgiving sin – that’s God’s part. Who is all of this straightening, leveling, moving, and smoothing stuff aimed at? That’s us! God sais, I can give you the gift – but you have to prepare yourself to receive it.

 I can give you the connection you’re so deeply wanting. But you’re going to have to get into prayer and counseling and therapy and self-awareness to be able to receive it. I can give you the intimacy you’re longing for – but you’ve got a clot in your system that if you don’t clear that out, it’s going to travel to your heart, brain, or lungs and it’s gonna give you a relational heart-attack and a spiritual aneurism. You need to get rid of the blockage. You need to do the work in you. You need to figure out what the problem is, and stop being so afraid of dealing with it, stop blowing it off like it’s no bog deal, stop thinking you can wait the weekend to get this thing looked at and get yourself into the urgent care to clear that junk out! Your deepest longings are only going to be fulfilled to the extent that you break down the blockage!

 When the Bible says about the birth of Jesus, CLEAR THE WAY IN THE WILDERNESS – It’s not a metaphor like God’s way of singing “Make way for Prince Ali,” like the movie Alladin!” It’s a literal command – if you want the longing fulfilled, then there’s work you have to do! You don’t have to work to earn it. The gift is free! That’s why it’s grace! But you do have to work to to live in the grace deeper, and deeper, and deeper in your life – because being given the gift of grace and living in the gift of grace are two entirely different things! Are you with me, church??

 How many times in a state of longing do we look at other people and think things to ourselves like, “Must be nice…” Must be nice to have that kind of life… Must be nice to have that kind of family… must be nice to have those kinds of friends… must be nice to have that kind of marriage – and we get it in our minds that the reason we don’t have those things and that others do is because they’re just lucky, or God loves them more than us – and it drives us more into hiding, drives us deeper into covering up our core longing with lesser desires…

 It is nice to have those kinds of friends. It is nice to have that kind of family. It is possible to have that kind of marriage – you know how those people got it? The only reason they have those things is because the people who have them removed the blockage. They smoothed out the rough stuff. They straightened out what was jacked up and crooked inside them.

When you really realize how short life is and how fragile it is, what becomes crystal clear to you instantaneously… is that from the time you wake up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night – that kind of connection is your one and only job. That is your primary purpose. The life you’re longing for is on the other side of the work you’re avoiding… So stop thinking you can give that blockage the weekend – because that sucker is gonna travel on you – and it’s going to affect your thinking, and it’s going to affect your heart and your emotions… it’s going to seize you up and you’ll know ABOUT God’s grace and the freedom that comes with it – and you’ll be envious of people who really do live in it and walk in it… But you’ll never live in it yourself.